Third Grade Curriculum

All third grade students are issued an iPad for use at school to access enhanced curriculum material, research and learn both individually and collaboratively, and strengthen technology skills.

RELIGION
Third grade Religion curriculum focuses on our response to God’s gifts and participation in daily prayer.  Students learn about morality, the sacraments, God the Creator, and Jesus the Savior. The first half of the year predominantly focuses on the Old Testament, whereas the second half focuses on the New Testament. The Catholic holidays and seasons are also studied. We attend weekday Mass once a week and plan and lead one Mass and one prayer service annually. Students participate in service projects throughout the year. 

LANGUAGE ARTS
The Reading program focuses on developing comprehension and analysis skills for both fiction and nonfiction works.  Students are challenged by the curriculum to clearly express their ideas in writing. Books are read aloud to the class.  The children participate in a book club meant to enrich the reading curriculum. Students study different genres including mystery, biography, and historical fiction.

The third grade Language Arts and Writing curriculum includes paragraph writing, personal narrative writing,  narrative writing, descriptive writing, persuasive writing, and writing of reports and speeches. Students complete two research projects in conjunction with their Science curriculum.  One results in an ebook the students create on their iPads and the other becomes a written research report. Students learn about the various parts of speech as well as sentence and word construction.

The Spelling program focuses on high frequency writing words.  Each unit introduces a basic spelling concept such as spelling patterns, homophones, compound words, contractions, or prefixes and suffixes.  Students take a weekly pretest which determines the level of difficulty of the words they will practice, and be tested on, that week.

MATH
Third grade Math instruction includes addition, subtraction, and rounding of whole numbers, money, geometry, fractions, and the basic multiplication and division facts.  Problem solving skills are developed through application of the concepts learned. Through interactive games and enrichment, the curriculum is able to meet the needs of both struggling and advanced math students.  Cooperative learning is frequently incorporated into daily lessons.

SCIENCE
Through hands-on science and content area reading, the third grade curriculum covers plants, animals, states of matter, energy, rocks and minerals, and fossils.  Students learn the scientific method of developing a hypothesis, recording data, using measuring tools, and reporting their findings. The children complete two science related research projects during the year, one on an animal and the other on a natural disaster, in conjunction with their Language Arts curriculum.  

Students attend STEM class weekly where they participate in hands-on activities which promote real-world problem solving skills.

SOCIAL STUDIES
The third grade Social Studies curriculum focuses on communities and how they change over time, why they need government, various cultures within our community, and how communities meet the needs of the people who live in them.  We also talk about geography and look at the history of Illinois and Chicago.

Please refer to the Specials/Fine Arts page to learn more about our third grade curriculum in the areas of Art, Music, Physical Education, and Technology.